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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/26563249">Copilot</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheStingingFish/pseuds/TheStingingFish'>TheStingingFish</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>The Mandalorian (TV)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Gen</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-09-20</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-09-20</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-06 09:54:03</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>General Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>757</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/26563249</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheStingingFish/pseuds/TheStingingFish</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>After Nevarro, Din reflects.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>10</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>60</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>Copilot</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p><em>You are as its father</em>. </p><p><br/>
Even now, days later, Din wants to argue. He is not anyone’s father, which is clearly a good thing. If the past weeks and months have proven anything, it’s that he’s not cut out for unsupervised child rearing. </p><p><br/>
No Mandalorian raises a child alone. There are always others around to help, to talk out problems, to take over so someone could work or rest. Their time on Sorgan had been like that and Din had thought, when they left, that he had a grip on what he was doing. Kids need to be kept safe. They need healthy food and lots of sleep and clean clothes when it’s possible. They need to be taught whatever it is they need to know, whether it’s krill farming or combat. The kid is too young for either of those, but his survival instincts are better than Din would have expected, if he’d had any sort of expectations. It’s just one of a thousand unanswerable questions he has. </p><p> </p><p>If it had been just him after Nevarro, Din would have — </p><p><br/>
— well, who the hell knew. Stayed with the Armorer. Or just crawled onto the Crest and found the next empty planet and slept for a week straight. Or gone off in search of whatever spineless Imps he could find and cut them down one by one. Maybe all of those, one after another. Maybe something else entirely. Maybe, if it had been just him, Nevarro wouldn’t have happened. </p><p><br/>
It probably would have. One way or another. Someday their time there would be up, just like before, and those who survived would have had to seek out some new hiding place. Whatever is left of the Empire tolerates <em>a</em> Mandalorian, but not the Mandalorians.</p><p> <br/>
But none of that matters. There’s no point in the what-if game. If he’d known, he never would have taken the job in the first place, never would have gone to Arvala-7, never would have known the kid existed. He hadn’t known, he did take the job, here they are. A clan of two. </p><p><br/>
He looks over his shoulder at the child, who is lightly dozing, belly full from the most recent meal Din cobbled together. He’ll need to come up with a replacement carrier for him; for now it’s back to the cargo crate lined with some old clothes. It feels like a mockery of the Ugnaught's careful craftsmanship, but it's what he has. He needs to figure out how to fashion some sort of <em>birikad</em> or harness for carrying kid as well, for when they need to stay close, something more secure than a battered old sling bag.</p><p> <br/>
He also needs to figure out a way to keep them both safe from Imperials, other hunters, and whoever else is out there while also finding an ancient race of possibly magic enemies, not to mention finding enough work to keep the ship fueled and them both fed. </p><p>His training did not prepare him for this. </p><p><br/>
The child grunts slightly, quietly, one little hand briefly tightening into a fist before relaxing. Maybe he’s dreaming. If so, Din hopes it is of something good, something safer and more certain than their current reality. He hopes that if there is a family or tribe the child came from, he can easily find them in his dreams.</p><p><br/>
Din sighs. He automatically scans over the displays in front of him. Life support, fuel, weapons, navigation, comms. Everything is fine for the moment, but eventually he’ll have to pick some sort of destination and go somewhere. It’s taken a few days for the pounding headaches to recede and his body to stop hurting enough that he can think without the adrenalin rush of life-or-death combat driving him. The child, too, has seemed tired, and they’ve spent a few days drifting aimlessly through empty space, resting and healing. </p><p><br/>
He turns and looks at the child again. Reaches out, and very gently touches the <em>kyr’bes</em> on the child’s chest, now threaded onto a much shorter strip of leather. He remembers giving it to Cara, knowing that someone who showed up with that and his name would be protected. He doesn't know how the child ended up with it, but it feels right to leave it with him. Din has his armor as a symbol of his people. He has no urge to take the mythosaur skull from the child. </p><p><br/>
<em>You are as its father</em>. </p><p><br/>
He’ll wait until the child is awake, he decides. Then, together, they’ll figure out where they're going. </p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>"How's your research project going, the one you need to complete in a few months in order to graduate on time?" my advisor asks. "Great! I'm hard at work," I say, minimizing the online dictionary for a fictional language, two fanfiction works in progress, and six tabs dissecting a one-minute trailer for a TV show.</p></blockquote></div></div>
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